To a greater force, and to a better nature, you, free, are subject, and that creates the mind in you, which the heavens have not in their charge. Therefore if the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.
Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter.
Give us this day the daily manna, without which, in this rough desert, he backward goes, who toils most to go on.
It was now the hour that turns back the longing of seafarers and melts their hearts, the day they have bidden dear friends farewell, and pierces the new traveler with love if he hears in the distance the bell that seems to mourn the dying day.
Do not rest in so profound a doubt except she tell it thee, who shall be a light between truth and intellect. I know not if thou understand: I speak of Beatrice.
How brief a blaze a woman's love will yield
If not relit by frequent touch and sight.
For always the man in whom thought springs up over thought sets his mark farther off, for the one thought saps the force of the other.
Unless, before then, the prayer assist me which rises from a heart that lives in grace: what avails the other, which is not heard in heaven?
To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.
"The Royal Banners are coming forth - - those of the master of hell - -
towards us now; so look ahead and see,"
my master said, "whether you can discern him."